


Nadryv

by thewhiskerydragon



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Character Study, Drinking, Emotions, F/M, Infidelity, Introspection, M/M, Moscow, Multi, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 14:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15145388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewhiskerydragon/pseuds/thewhiskerydragon
Summary: In which Moscow is cold and Fedya comes to an upsetting realization.





	Nadryv

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, my favorite genre of writing is 'idiots who don't realize they're in love, goddammit'. I am trash for emotional conflict and trash for Great Comet, and this is the overlap. Enjoy my indulgent garbage. 
> 
> A special thanks to @MaplePaizley for being a beautiful human being and proofreading/shouting me into confidence.

It goes something like this:

There’s a quiet draft that has swept across the streets of Moscow, and somehow, it’s managed to burrow its way into Fedya’s jacket. He hadn’t noticed it in the Club, where the warmth of vodka and moving bodies had been enough to drive anyone to sweat even in midwinter, but now that he’s stepped outside, the cold stings like a slap to the face, and the chill that worms down his spine has set his teeth chattering like the _rat-tat-tat_ of gunfire.

“Gunfire, _mon cher_?” Anatole crows. Gunfire—of course he’d find that amusing, the posh, spoilt prick. He’s probably never heard it in his life.

He’s probably equally unfamiliar with chattering teeth, but that’s a matter Fedya has neither the energy nor the will to unpack right now.

“Forget I even said anything,” he says, clenching his jaw.

Anatole laughs and slings an arm around Fedya’s shoulders to draw him in close. Fedya, despite the undeniably dark colour of his mood, doesn’t bother trying to lean away. Say what you want about Anatole—and many, many choice things could be said about Anatole—but the man is warm as a coal stove, even on a foul night like this.

“Teeth like gunfire. _Mon Dieu_ , what a simile. We’ve found ourselves a right poet, haven’t we, Lena?” he calls.

Hélène doesn’t bother gracing this with a response, not that Fedya had expected her to. She’s walking a good three or so meters ahead of them, so if she’s heard Anatole’s voice over the snap of the wind, much less Fedya’s comment about the sound of chattering teeth, she’s clearly elected to ignore them, which, much like walking three or so meters ahead of them, is quite in-character for her.

“She’s abandoned us, I think,” Anatole says, his mouth entirely too close to Fedya’s ear. “Ashamed to be seen with two drunkards like us. We’re on our own now.”

His breath is more vodka than air. Fedya scowls and places one hand on his cheek to turn his head away, earning himself another laugh. He’d detach himself altogether if he were in a more vindictive mood, but Anatole is much drunker than he is, and judging from the chaotic meandering of his gait, he might simply keel over in the street without something to lean against. It wouldn’t be the first or even the tenth time for that, and since Fedya has no desire to have to fish Anatole out of a gutter again, he loops his own arm around Anatole’s waist to hold him steady.

“It’s only you she’d be ashamed of,” he grumbles. “Honestly, Anatole, how much have you had tonight?”

“Oh, Dolokhov, it was only a little fun. What’s the harm in it?”

“You can hardly walk, you fool.”

“Don’t spoil my mood.”

“You’ll spoil your liver, carrying on like that.”

“I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense,” he says. “I’m on this Earth to enjoy myself, not to worry about this and that and the other thing.” Anatole smiles, leaning his head against Fedya’s shoulder, and the blonde of his hair is almost white from the snow. “You know, I think you could stand to learn a lesson or two from me.”

“I could, now?” Fedya says, in a flat, unamused voice.

Anatole nods. Horizontally at that, which makes for quite an interesting sight. Then he hums something soft and rumbling in the back of his throat, like a cat, and Fedya feels it vibrating in the bones of his face.

For a moment, the street is warm, if only for the heat seeping in from Anatole’s open jacket. Even the first few buttons of his waistcoat are undone—Christ, he’s either come down with a fever or lost his senses, or both—and before he knows it, Fedya’s eyes have strayed and stared for too long at those goddamned buttons, and his face begins to burn.

He looks back to the road ahead, dirty and dark, lit only by the sputtering streetlamps and the lights in apartment windows, but Anatole hasn’t noticed. Or if he has, he doesn’t give any indication of it.

“You’re always so dreadfully uptight, until you’re angry. It’s not good for the heart, you know, bouncing back and forth like that. So _extreme_. You ought to have some wiggle room in between,” he continues, with all the confident air of a university professor delivering a lecture. Fedya wonders how much of this speech he has prepared beforehand versus how much of it he’s delivering off the top of his head. You never really can tell with Anatole.

He decides to humour him rather than argue. “And where does one find this ‘wiggle room’?”

“At the bottom of a bottle. Or with a nice lady or two.”

Of course, that’s his answer. It’s his answer to all of life’s problems. Women and wine. Fedya scoffs.

Anatole’s hand drifts over to Fedya’s collar to dust off a clump of snow. “You know, I thought you were meant to be the sensible one of us two.”

 _Unfortunately, I am_ , Fedya thinks, with a huff that ghosts past his lips in a curl of ice.

At last, they reach the end of the street, where Hélène has stopped to wait for them. Fedya is surprised that she hasn’t taken off to the house by herself—normally she’s not so patient as to stick around while Anatole dawdles drunkenly, Fedya with him, half-carrying his weight. It’s not the longest they’ve ever taken on this walk, a familiar route by now, but never this late and never on this cold a night.

“What’ve you stopped for?” Fedya asks.

Hélène rolls her eyes. “You two. You won’t be back to the house till the next millennium at this rate.”

Anatole detaches himself from Fedya and stumbles towards her, one hand over his heart. “Oh, how charitable of you, Lena. How can we ever repay you?”

“Your coat is unbuttoned, Tolya,” she says primly.

At that, Anatole laughs, and the force of it sends him teetering back and forth, as if the ground beneath his feet is a ship at sea. He catches himself on a streetlamp before he topples over. “That it is.”

Shaking her head, Hélène steadies him by the lapels and fastens his outerwear, first the waistcoat, then the coat proper. “You’ll catch cold like that.”

“I was hardly cold,” he scoffs.

Over her shoulder, Hélène shoots Fedya a long-suffering look of bemusement. “Help me, would you? I don’t want him falling and cracking his skull open.”

“Oh, pish-posh,” says Anatole. “I’m perfectly fine.”

He’s still swaying, either way, and the arm that he’s thrown around the lamp-beam has started to slide down, the rest of him with it.

Fedya catches Anatole beneath the armpits and hoists him upright. Anatole giggles and sways again, then knocks backwards into Fedya’s chest and latches onto Fedya’s shoulders for balance, grinning, and Christ in heaven, he’s not all that heavy but with the way he’s throwing his weight around he may just as well be a tonne of lead. Fedya tries holding him still and immediately realizes that this is a thankless task, and Hélène must realize this too, because she sighs and says, “I’m hailing us a carriage. My feet are aching.”

The second half of her statement is an excuse, of course. If the way she had been dancing in the Club hadn’t been enough to make her feet ache, then the scant distance they’ve covered between its front door and this street corner surely wouldn’t be able to either.

Fedya doesn’t mention this. Vaguely, he’s aware that he somehow must navigate back to his flat eventually, which is an even greater distance from Hélène’s house than it is from the Club, but Anatole still can’t seem to walk in a straight line and Hélène might kill him if he abandons her with her very drunk, very giggly brother, and this takes precedence over that.

It’s not long before she flags down a carriage. The three of them board, Hélène taking one bench for herself and leaving the other Anatole and Fedya.  

Anatole sits in the exact same manner as he carries himself through life—carelessly, taking up far too much room, and without any consideration for those around him. His legs slide out beneath him, almost to the bench opposite. His head finds a resting place, with neither intention nor permission, in the crook of Fedya’s neck.

Hélène pulls a hip flask seemingly out of nowhere. “Comfortable there, Tolya?”

“Very,” he says, more to Fedya’s sleeve than to her.

“And have you considered that Fedya might not be quite as comfortable as you are with this arrangement?”

Anatole looks up at Fedya through his eyelashes, smiling. “Of course not. How could anyone be uncomfortable like this?”

Fedya tuts and stiffens his shoulders, which nudges Anatole upright. “You’re utterly insufferable, you know that?”

And Anatole only laughs, of course, because he’s impossible to offend even sober. “Insufferable? _Mes chéris_ , if I am—which I’m not—more fool you for suffering me this long.”

Hélène uncorks her flask and takes a swig. The smell of whatever-it-is is so strong that Fedya’s eyes water, but she doesn’t so much as flinch.

With a heavy sigh, he turns his head to the window. It’s almost too dim to see anything as the streets slip by in a blur of darkness and silence. Every so often, he glimpses a snatch of colour—the flickering yellow of a streetlamp, the dusty red of a roof-tile, the fading green of a curtain—and beyond that, nothing.

He’s never been fond of Petersburg, per se, but it’s times like this that he’s pointedly reminded of how much less he dislikes it than Moscow. If this city ever once had something of a heartbeat, you’d be hard-pressed to find it now.

Anatole, as always, is more than happy to fill the dead air with chatter.

“Here’s a good one,” he says, and evidently, he’s already a few jokes in, but Fedya hasn’t been listening close enough to hear until now. He begins with theatrical flourish: “Poruchik Rzhevsky is putting his riding boots on and is about to take leave of a charming _demoiselle_ he had met the previous evening. ‘ _Mon cher_ Poruchik’, she says,”—and here, his voice takes on a shrill falsetto as if to imitate the _demoiselle_ —“‘aren't you forgetting the money?’ Rzhevsky turns to her and responds—”

“You’ve already told us this one,” says Hélène.

Anatole frowns. “I have, now? How about, ‘Napoleon and the Tsar walk into a bar and order’—?”

“Yes, Tolya.”

“The vicar and the contortionist?”

“Heard it all before.”

Anatole purses his lips and allows his head to fall back to Fedya’s shoulder. The look on his face indicates that he’s deep in thought. At least, as deep in thought as he can be. If Fedya were a braver or stupider man, he might even consider putting an arm around his shoulders. “Hm. How odd. Perhaps I’ve used them all up.”

Fedya massages his temple with his fingertips to quell the headache that’s building behind his right eye. “And to think it only took twenty-three years.”

Hélène takes another gulp from her flask and reaches across the carriage to ruffle Anatole’s hair. “Thank God. I might actually have some peace and quiet now.”

“You enjoy my jokes. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

“I enjoy your silence more.”

There’s more laughter, hers as well as his. Fedya casts another glance to the street. They’re so warm, these two, it’s almost enough to fend off the cold darkness leaking in from outside.

Once they arrive at the house, Hélène ushers them into the sitting room. The fire in the hearth has all but died down by now, though its embers are still smouldering. If Fedya had the energy, he could coax some life back into it with the poker. But there’s something more satisfying about watching its lights flicker out, even if it takes with it a bit of warmth.

He sinks onto the ottoman closest to the fireplace, and Hélène reclines against the settee. Anatole doesn’t make it quite that far. One step into the room, and he’s already listing against the wall for support. Then his foot catches on something—God knows what, thin air probably—and sends him tumbling to the floor.

Hélène springs to her feet to catch him, a moment too late. Winded but laughing, Anatole rolls over onto his back, and she sinks to her knees at his side.

“Are you alright?” she asks.

Without missing a beat, he responds, “The rug tripped me."

The rug. A poor excuse for his own clumsiness.

“Christ, Tolya,” says Fedya.

Hélène clucks and pulls him into a sitting position, until he’s leaning his weight against the backrest of the settee. “You’ll wake up the whole house if you keep tripping around.”

“Perhaps I ought to head to bed,” Anatole says airily.

She runs one hand through his hair. She probably means to fix it, but it only makes it stand up more than it already does. “That’s the best idea you’ve had all day.”

“It was my idea to go to Matreshka’s.”

“ _Sleep_ ,” she says. “Before you break something.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Hélène catches Fedya’s eye. “You should help him,” she says.

Fedya can’t help but agree with this. The last time Anatole tried going up the stairs by himself in a state like this, he’d fallen and smacked his forehead against the railing so hard that the bruise hadn’t faded for almost a month.

“Alright,” he says.

Hélène turns back to Anatole and lifts him to his feet. Given the height difference between them, this takes quite a bit of stretching. “I’ll see you in the morning, Tolya. Sleep well.”

Anatole kisses her cheek with a clumsy, “Night night, Lena,” and Hélène hands him off to Fedya.

Fedya shifts easily to take his weight. Anatole is taller, but he’s narrower, lighter too. Sometimes Fedya thinks his bones must be like those of a bird. It certainly feels that way as they trundle up the stairs.

“You’re such a good friend, Fedya,” Anatole slurs. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

Fedya shakes his head. “God only knows.”

It’s a small mercy that Anatole’s room is the first to the left after you reach the second floor. Fedya shoulders the door open, grateful that they don’t have much further to walk.

The air here is heavily-perfumed, but not overwhelmingly so. In one corner there is a bureau lit by an oil lamp, overflowing with half-written papers and discarded ink quills, and in the other a violin case. A Persian rug, an Imperial Army uniform—unworn, of course—laid over the backrest of a chair, and a large oak dresser.

“Here we go,” Fedya says, manoeuvring them past the doorway.

Anatole hums something noncommittal in response. His legs are hardly supporting his own weight now.

At last, they reach the bed, a large four-poster overlooked by a French window. Fedya leans Anatole against the nearest bedpost to catch his breath. Anatole’s hands fumble with the buttons on his coat, but their movements are clumsy and slow. Fedya brushes him away and takes care of it himself.

“Your hands are ice, _mon cher_ ,” Anatole drawls.

“That’s because it’s cold outside,” he says, in a slow, level voice. The coat slides to the ground, still dusted with snow.

Anatole regards him curiously. “We’re indoors now, aren’t we?”

And then Anatole takes Fedya’s hands in his own, and dear God, is his skin warm, and Fedya feels the leftover chill from the street beginning to melt away, and now he’s half frozen and half burning. Anatole grins wickedly, as if he’s just won a round of Boston.

“Isn’t this better?” he says.

Fedya swallows, and the knot of guilt in his throat goes down cold and heavy. “You’re drunk, Anatole,” he says thickly.

Anatole hums again—this must be a new habit of his, answering people with humming instead of words—and smiles, catlike. “So are you.”

“Anatole,” Fedya says sternly.

Anatole slings his arms around Fedya’s neck. It’s only a careless gesture, Fedya knows, and it’s not as if Anatole ever puts any thought into a single thing that he does, but his face burns all the same for some inexplicable reason.

It occurs to him, in a moment of singular awkward clarity, that there is no one watching them here. No prying eyes to see. No ears pressed to the wall to listen.

No Hélène looming over his shoulder like a watchful shadow.

One of Anatole’s hands has begun to slide down his back. Fedya disentangles himself and steps away, allowing Anatole to drop to the mattress with a surprised noise.

“What was that for?” Anatole says. He props himself up on his elbows. In the half-lamplight, his hair looks like some ridiculous bird perched on the top of his head. “Am I bothering you?”

 _Very much so_ , Fedya thinks. _Congratulations on finally having grown some self-awareness._

But there’s something genuinely hurt in Anatole’s face now, and it’s more unnerving than it is pathetic.  

Fedya almost hangs his head. “No, Tolya.”

“Alright. I don’t believe you, though.”

He doesn’t have to. All he has to do is close his mouth and go the hell to sleep.

“Goodnight, Anatole,” he says.

“Goodnight, Fedya,” comes the muffled response.

Sighing, Fedya runs a hand down his face and heads back downstairs. The sitting room is empty, but there’s a light in one of the doorways further down the corridor. He follows it to the kitchen, where Hélène stands, arms folded across her chest, staring down the wine rack as if it’s just challenged her to a duel.

“You took your sweet time,” she says, still not facing him.

Fedya shrugs. “He wasn’t in a cooperative mood.”

Hélène reaches for a bottle—as if she hasn’t drunk enough this evening already—and takes to the kitchen floor with nothing but the flimsy shawl tied around her shoulders and her bare feet poking out beneath the hem of her skirt. Knees creaking, Fedya joins her.

“Where is your husband?” he asks.

Hélène rakes a hand through her hair, dislodging a green-feather brooch. Her dark curls tumble across her shoulders. In the candlelight, her skin has lost some of its usual olive glow, and the hazel of her eyes has darkened almost to pitch.

“Locked in his study.” She uncorks the bottle to take a swig and wipes her mouth on the back of her hand, leaving behind a smear of lipstick as she does. “If he’s not sleeping already. He won’t hear us.”

Fedya doesn’t doubt this for a second. If not for the hour—the clock on the wall currently reads as quarter past one in the morning—then for the fact that Pierre is, by all accounts, as oblivious as a pile of bricks and twice as deaf. Fedya could have fucked Hélène at noon on the dining room table and the old fool still wouldn’t have noticed. He knows this because he has already done just that.

“We’re supposed to be off to the opera tomorrow night, Anatole and I,” she says. A glance at the clock, and she amends this to: “Tonight, actually.”

“Interesting,” says Fedya, which is a lie.

Hélène tips her head back against the counter. “I doubt Pierre will be in any fit state to attend. You can escort me instead.”

Fedya chuckles as she hands him the bottle. Trust Hélène Bezukhova to turn an invitation into a demand. “Alright, I’ll go with you,” he says.

“To the opera,” she says

Fedya raises the bottle in agreement. “To your new escort.”

It’s one of the nicer wines, whatever she’s chosen for them. Tart and heady, not that it matters much. You don’t drink for the taste, as he always says.

“Pass it here,” she says, one hand already reaching for the bottle.

They go back and forth like this for a few minutes, mindless talk between drinking, and floor is cold, but Hélène isn’t, and Fedya finds himself slowly gravitating towards her warmth without even realizing it.

If Anatole were here, he thinks, he’d be sprawled across the floor, to hell with sitting upright, and the bottle would already by empty by now, either drank or spilled over the slate tiles. Fedya wishes he were here so that he could be warm on both sides instead of just one. A Kuragin under each arm, and the taste of wine, and laughter. It would be enough to make him forget his headache and the itch of not-guilt crawling beneath his skin.

“Something’s bothering you,” Hélène announces.

The bottle is in his hands again. “There’s nothing bothering me.”

She says nothing, but the look on her face is that of a marksman. Cold. Analytical. Dissecting him with her eyes. If Fedya didn’t know any better, he’d say she could almost see right through him.

When he raises the bottle to his lips this time, he finds it almost empty. He tips it higher until it gives.

“It’s Anatole, isn’t it?”

Fedya almost chokes on wine. “I beg your pardon?”

“You love him. Or you want him, at least. I’m not blind, Fyodor.”

Her words tear into him like a bullet to the stomach. Fedya is not a coward. Far from it. He has led scores of men into battle, through smoke-ridden air, through the boom of cannon fire and the hail of gunshots. He has fought no less than twenty duels and come out clean every time, and if any fool were brave or stupid enough to even suggest the notion of his cowardice, he would not hesitate to lunge for his pistols and insist on taking the conversation to the nearest woodland clearing at dawn.

And yet he balks all the same.

There’s something almost teasing in the curl of Hélène’s smirk. The half-baked retort that he’s been stewing withers and dies on his tongue like a bad taste, stale and dry, and immediately, he knows he’s allowed the silence to last for too long.

It’s answer enough for her. That’s the issue with Hélène, he decides. You don’t need to give her any answers. She pries them out of you first.

“Oh, _mon chéri_ ,” she sighs, and takes the bottle from his hands. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

As if anyone could ever lie to Hélène Bezukhova. He almost laughs at how ridiculous the prospect of it is, before he remembers where he is and what she has just said.

“I’m not lying,” he says. In his mouth, it sounds more like an excuse than a proper response, mostly because he hasn’t even said anything in his own defense yet.

Hélène sets the bottle aside. One manicured fingernail trails along its rim and draws out a high keening note, almost as if it’s singing. Fedya’s frown deepens a little further at the noise. She places her palm on the ringing glass to muffle it.

“I’m not lying,” he repeats.

He’s aware that she heard him the first time. He’s equally aware that she won’t believe him, but hearing it in his own voice makes it seem more real. Perhaps if he can convince himself, then he can convince her.

“If you want to play ignorant, that’s your own choice. But you’re not as good an actor as you like to think you are.”

There’s no response to this. Nothing that will satisfy her, at any rate, and Fedya has no choice but to admit that she has him pinned. Hélène has always been maddeningly observant. He knows he’ll only make a bigger fool out of himself if he protests.

Scowling, he folds his arms across his chest and glares at the clock. If he keeps staring like this, he might just burn a hole through it.

Her hand settles atop his. It almost startles him to the point of recoiling.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she says. “I don’t take issue with that sort of thing.”

That sort of thing.

Face burning, Fedya pulls his hand back, into his lap, and snarls, “What do you mean, ‘that sort of thing’?”

“Oh, come off it. You know what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“You’re allowed to want what you want, Fyodor,” she says matter-of-factly. “Anatole was right, you know. You really could stand to learn a thing or two from him.”

“Do you always eavesdrop on us?” he snaps.

Hélène shrugs and throws back another mouthful of wine. “It’s not eavesdropping if you’re shouting it halfway across the street. Don’t look so uptight. It’s only me. I’m a friend.”

Fedya considers this for a moment.

Does he like Hélène? Tricky. She can hold her own in conversation, he can count on one hand the number of people who can out-drink her and still have plenty of fingers left to spare, and on more than one occasion she’s scraped together the difference in his rent when his purse ran short, so he supposes that he does.

Does he trust her? That’s an entirely different matter altogether, one he’s never paid much thought, because Fedya on principle does not trust people. But given the fact that he hasn’t outright denied anything yet, and given what she’s shown him that she knows and given what she must know logically, is there even a choice?

He doesn’t love her, that much is certain. And it’s just as certain that she doesn’t love him either. Love isn’t for people like them. Love isn’t for idiots like Anatole either, who have neither a thought in their heads nor a care in the world. There are lovers, and there is love, and the overlap between the two is a hair-thin slice of the world that none of their wicked souls ever really deserve to reach.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with it?” she says. “Is that your problem?”

There’s not much of a point in denying it now. Better bite the bullet, he reasons. She’ll figure it out sooner or later anyhow.

“It’s not right,” he says. “Anatole is a man.”

Hélène raises an eyebrow, and the bottle with it. “And I’m a woman, and I have a husband. None of it matters. It’s only a problem if you make it one.”

She doesn’t get it. She just doesn’t understand. And she never will, because observant as she is, when Hélène sees the world one way, there’s no force of nature that can convince her to see anything different.

“It’s not the same thing,” he says. It’s a flimsy explanation, and it shouldn’t make him feel this small or weak, but words have never come to him as easily as they do to Hélène.

Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov is twenty-eight years old, and in that moment, he may just as well be a small child again.

Hélène sets the bottle aside. “You know,” she says quietly, “if you tell him, he won’t—”

“There’s no point,” Fedya snaps.

She seems to draw in on herself at that; the lines of her mouth harden, and she turns so that she’s facing the opposite wall instead of him, and Fedya would consider feeling guilty if only he weren’t so damn angry as well, and he only has room in him for one or the other now.

“Why not?” she says.

“I already have you. That’s more than enough.”

The angle of Hélène’s eyebrow steepens. “You don’t _have_ me. I have a husband.”

It’s pointless. It’s pointless and it’s spiteful and above all, it’s infuriating. Hélène doesn’t have a husband until she absolutely has to. Hélène doesn’t have a husband when she and Fedya are trawling through taverns and bars and Pierre sits at home twiddling his thumbs. Hélène doesn’t have a husband when she’s pouring complaints of boredom and loneliness into Fedya’s ear like wine into a glass. Hélène only has a husband when it’s convenient to her.

Now, of all times.

“What happened to these things not mattering?” he says.

“I’ve decided I’ve changed my mind,” she says, examining the string of pearls around her throat.

Fedya takes in a deep breath through his nose, hoping to calm himself. It has the opposite effect. “Would you have married me instead?” he asks. “If I’d’ve asked you first?”

“No. You’re a horrid beast of a man. You have nothing to your name but a handful of rubles and those ridiculous medals. Honestly, Fedya, what sort of a question is that?”

Fedya grinds his teeth together. Unconsciously, his hands have tightened into fists at his sides.

“What do we have together?” she continues, casual cruelty dripping from every word, slow and sweet as poisoned honey. “Drinking? Fucking? You’re delusional if you think that means anything.”

“It’s more than Pierre can give you,” he growls. “It’s more than Anatole—”

Fedya cuts himself off a moment too late. He knows that he’s erred when Hélène’s face hardens.

“Perhaps you ought to go to him instead,” she says coldly. “If you’re just as thoughtless as he is. You two deserve each other. It’s a perfect match.”

It’s too much. It’s too much insult, too much mockery, and he can’t bear it a second longer or he might explode if he doesn’t shoot something first. He bolts to his feet, glaring, and she doesn’t even move from where she’s sitting.

If she were a man, he thinks, he would challenge her to a duel right here in the kitchen.

“Funnily enough,” he says, forcing each word out through clenched teeth, “I was about to say the same of you.”

Hélène’s knuckles are white around the bottle. He wonders if she’s going to throw it at him, and for a moment, he hopes that she will. Some cruel, hurt part of him is spoiling for a fight. Only she can hurt him with words the way he can hurt people with fists. Level the playing field, he thinks. Throw it. Have at it. I know you want to.

Then her hand loosens. The tension hasn’t ebbed from her shoulders, but some of the anger has, and he knows it’s a losing battle.

Like a coward, Fedya retreats.  

“Where are you going?” Hélène snaps.

“Home,” he says, already halfway down the corridor. “I can see when I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

She doesn’t follow him.

Fedya shucks on his coat. His hands are shaking, so it takes longer to fasten the buttons than it should. And then he’s off, down the hall, past the front door, and out into the cold night air of Moscow once more.

He doesn’t look back.

* * *

 

The next day, at the opera, Anatole catches the eye of a pretty girl dressed in white.

You know how the rest of it goes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos (but comments especially) make my entire day and 10% of all proceeds go towards feeding the hamster running in the wheel that powers my brain.


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